Guest Speaker: Professor Byron Lamont – Banksia woodland and iconic species of the Swan Coastal Plain

Please join us to hear Byron Lamont, who is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Curtin University, provide an insight into the geomorphology of the Swan Coastal Plain and some of the features of the vegetation and flora. Byron wants to particularly talk about the ecology of the woolly bush Adenanthos cygnorum and firewood banksia Banksia menziesii, pointing out interesting features that would escape most people unless they were keen naturalists.

Byron had a childhood in the 50s exploring the uncleared banksia woodland of Mt Pleasant and Bull Creek, which must have given him a great love of ecology.

“Brentwood, a new suburb of small cheap houses according to my dad, was just starting to be built. Leach Hwy did not exist then and neither did the freeway or Mt Henry Bridge. My dad was a landscape gardener and I helped him as a teenager and after I finished my Bachelors in Agricultural Science in 1966. The work was too heavy and had no future that I could see, so I decided to return to University to undertake research on native plants in 1969.”

“I pioneered research on the root systems and woody fruits of the banksia family. I was the first person in Australia to submit my PhD thesis as published papers, and the only botanist to receive a Doctor of Science from the University of WA since 1960. I was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2010 for my research and teaching about the Australian flora. This year, 2022, I was ranked fifth among 20 thousand researchers who have published articles about fire ecology over the last 10 years. With Phil Groom I published a book on the ecology of the Southwest Australian flora in 2015 that can be downloaded free from the web.”

To add to all this Byron is also a competent artist and pianist and keen tennis player.